Articles
 by Jeff Strand September 13, 2002 |
The
Seriously Whacked Point of View “More by Jeff Strand |
I’m in the middle of a
game right now, and I’m stuck.
I don’t mean some sissy
little “Oh, dearest me, I’ve been waving this mouse pointer around
for nearly three minutes without the solution presenting itself”
stuck, either. I’m talking about the kind of stuck where I wonder
if my monitor is too small and the answer is between the pixels.
The kind of stuck where I’m convinced that the programmers fell behind
schedule and were unable to complete the game, so they slipped an
impossible puzzle in there hoping that nobody would ever find out.
The kind of stuck where I wish the designer was standing here right
now so I could fling a hot beverage at him.
And I’m having a great
time.
As far as I’m concerned,
when you’re playing an adventure game, you should be reduced
to directing foul language at inanimate objects. You should be tearing
out your hair, bashing your head (gently) against your desk, and omitting
the game designer’s name from your Christmas card list.
This is not to say that
every adventure game should be designed with only the expert player
in mind. We need games for beginners, too…but hopefully newcomers
to the genre will relish the experience of screaming at the top of
their lungs and/or weeping softly when they hit that beginner-level
brick wall.
Some time ago, I wrote
about my use of walkthroughs. Even though I thought the column functioned
primarily as a confession of mental illness and a cry for help, a
lot of readers e-mailed me to say how much they were able to relate.
The sad truth is that, like many of you, I use hints more often than
I care to admit…but in almost every case, I’m immediately disappointed
that I did.
Of course, adventure games
are supposed to be fun. Unless you’re a reviewer or one of the playtesters
or have parents with unusual taste in chores, nobody is forcing you
to play a computer game. So if you want to play the entire game click-by-click
with a walkthrough in hand, then it’s your choice, and even though
I might be tempted to say something like “Why not just watch
a movie instead, you loser?!?” we all have to decide what
is fun for ourselves.
For example, I love a hearty,
challenging puzzle. I do not love wandering around the game feeling
like I’ve accomplished every single given task, and yet being unable
to make the story move forward (which I’ll call the Gabriel Knight
Syndrome). If I’m not making any progress yet I can’t find any problems
to solve, then I’m much more likely to cheat (though I’m just as likely
to feel guilty about it afterward). Some of you may lunge for a map
the instant you’re confronted with a maze. Some of you have a limited
tolerance for mechanical puzzles. Some of you may have been to too
many Alice Cooper concerts in your misspent youth and are unable to
cope with audio puzzles. I admit it…if there’s a puzzle that involves
placing crystals, discs, or runes in specific locations on an altar
using only cryptic symbols as clues, I’ll play around with it for
a few minutes and then I’m off to Mr. Walkthrough. If the puzzle isn’t
going to be fun for you…cheat! It’s your leisure time!
But let’s assume that you
don’t have a moral objection to a particular puzzle and decide to
consult a walkthrough. Here are the possible results:
1. You couldn’t proceed
because there was a bug.
It happens. Also likely,
with an older game, is that your machine is too fast for a particular
timed puzzle. In this case, you are absolved from all guilt for seeking
the hint.
But let’s be honest here…how
often is it REALLY a bug? You know darn well that there’s only a teeny
tiny wee little chance that your problems in this game are bug-related,
and instead of checking walkthroughs you need to be downloading patches
and posting “Yo! Is this a bug?” messages on adventure game
bulletin boards.
2. The puzzle could
never have been solved without a hint.
There’s a puzzle in Torin’s
Passage where you have to arrange nine tiles in a certain order,
made more difficult by the fact that you can flip each tile in four
directions. I would never, ever, ever have figured that one out on
my own. Not ever. But unless I used the in-game hints or just started
methodically placing each tile in every possible position, I simply
wasn’t getting past that one. I used the in-game hints.
Similarly, it caused me
incredible agony to cheat on Circle of Blood, one of my all-time
favorite adventure games, but I absolutely could not, after hours
of trying, get past that damn goat. The answer is fair enough, I guess,
but it requires you to interact with your environment differently
than any other puzzle in the game, and I’m pretty sure I never would
have come up with that solution.
But those two are the exceptions.
Most of the time when I cheat, the answer falls into category 3…
3. You missed something.
Yep, usually my inability
to solve an adventure game puzzle is due to my own carelessness. I
wasn’t paying close enough attention. I’m a doofus.
Often, players gripe about
“Pixel Hunt” puzzles. Okay, I’m not going to argue that
there aren’t some unfair and tedious pixel hunts out there…however,
my opinion is that when you’re playing an adventure game, you need
to be really LOOKING at that screen. Carefully. Study it. Forget what
your parents said about damaging your vision and press your face right
up there against that monitor. What are all those weird objects on
the desk? Why does that leaf have a funky stem? Become one with the
graphics.
And, finally, the most
frustrating of all…
4. You would have figured
it out on your own eventually.
I mean, c’mon, doesn’t
that just bug the holy heck out of you? You can’t figure out a puzzle,
you resort to a walkthrough, and the answer is something you should
have been able to get without cheating.
Quite often, even if the
puzzle is illogical, I’m annoyed because I would’ve solved it if I’d
been a little bit more persistent, and then I would have enjoyed the
bonus glory of solving an illogical puzzle. In my last column, I discussed
a puzzle in The Longest Journey where you have to (SPOILER
WARNING AGAIN) put a can of soda in a paint mixer, take a subway across
town, and give it to a cop so that it sprays all over him.
I stand by my opinion that
it’s a stupid puzzle. At the same time, it’s not an unsolvable one.
After all, it’s an adventure game, and I should darn well have been
messing around some more with the paint mixer. In fact, I should have
known to put a can of soda in there, having seen the episode of The
Simpsons where Bart does the same thing. Completely illogical,
yes, but still, I should’ve been able to solve it on my own…and
I wish I had!
Pure trial-and-error is
boring, but there’s nothing wrong with a game that forces the player
to get his or her hands dirty, to try lots of different things, to
experiment and find creative, even outlandish solutions to the problems.
That’s part of the fun!
If you use a walkthrough,
you’re not missing the plot or the characters or the dialogue…but
you’re definitely missing part of the experience. Many of my all-time
favorite games (Day of the Tentacle, Curse of Monkey Island,
Sanitarium, Might & Magic III) are ones that I finished
entirely on my own, games that I savored even when they had me clawing
at the wallpaper.
That said, I know that
I will certainly not be giving up on the art of cheating. But if you
use hints as a rule rather than an exception, why not try this: At
the moment you feel compelled to reach for the walkthrough, force
yourself to keep playing for exactly ten more minutes before you do
so. You may be surprised at your ability to figure out the solution…and
now much more fun you’ll have.
Unless it’s a put-the-crystal-in-the-right-slot
puzzle. Go ahead and cheat on those.
Jeff Strand is the author of Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience
Necessary), How to Rescue a Dead Princess, Mandibles, and probably
some other weird novels. You can, if so inclined, visit his Seriously
Whacked website at http://www.jeffstrand.com.
